


A Haunting in Hell's Kitchen

by Willowe



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Demons, Gen, Haunting, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 14:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4628358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt’s heart is beating so hard he can feel it in his throat, and he thinks at first that that’s the reason he can’t hear the other person in the room. But the longer he listens, the more certain he is that there isn’t anyone else in the room with him.</p>
<p>There was never anyone else in the room with him.</p>
<p>(written for a prompt on the daredevilkink meme)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Haunting in Hell's Kitchen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/4501.html?thread=7963285#cmt7963285):
> 
> _So Matt, for whatever reason, ends up in a haunted building. Maybe it's his apartment, Avengers' Tower is built over a graveyard, whatever. Just that Matt lives in a haunted place that he doesn't know is haunted._
> 
> _He notices it slowly at first - stuff being moved, even though none of the people with access to his apartment would ever do that to him. Footsteps, weird smells, the feeling of not being alone...Matt wonders if he's going crazy, until he starts finding scratches most definitely not from Daredeviling._
> 
> _And, like any good Catholic boy, Matt knows what type of spirit leaves scratches. (It's demons. It's always demons.)_

It starts with things going missing. Getting moved. Disappearing, and reappearing in a new place a few hours- or a few days- later. 

Matt thinks he’s imagining it, at first, because it’s always little things. His coffee mug being in the cupboard, when he could’ve sworn he pulled it out already. His toothbrush going missing, and showing up on top of his dresser after he buys a new one. He finds his keys on the floor one morning, and he always, always leaves his keys on his kitchen counter- but he was tired last night, when he got back from the office late and was dragging his feet getting suited up to head out on patrol. He must’ve just missed the counter, dropped them on the floor by mistake.

(He’s never missed the counter before. He would’ve heard them fall, but he didn’t. Because they didn’t fall.)

Matt stays in for two nights in a row, goes to sleep early and gets plenty of rest. He feels better than he has in months. Years, even. He keeps a mental list of everything he moves, everything he sets down. He puts his keys on the kitchen counter. (They end up on the floor.) He can’t find his shoes in the morning. He tells himself that he probably just got too much sleep, threw off his equilibrium a little. This will pass once he gets his body back on his normal schedule.

(He wears sneakers to the office. His dress shoes are sitting neatly by the door when he gets home.)

Then large things start moving. He runs into his couch when it gets moved a foot to the left. He makes his bed in the morning. The covers are on the floor by the time he comes home from work. He remakes the bed- it’s undone by the time he returns from his nightly patrols. There’s no sign that someone has been in his apartment besides him. They probably got blown back by a gust of air. (His windows were closed.) It was just a gust of air.

Matt is woken one night to the sound of something crashing in his living room. He groans but shuffles out of his bedroom, knowing that it’s better to clean this up now before he goes back to sleep and forgets about it. Only- only there’s nothing out of place in his living room. Nothing his senses are picking up, and when he walks around the room nothing is out of place. Nothing is out of place, not even the keys that have ended up on his kitchen floor four times this week already.

He must have heard something crashing in a different apartment. (It was definitely in his apartment.) Maybe one of his neighbors knocked something over. (He can hear them breathing, calm and even in sleep.) 

His heart is still racing, loud even over the ragged sounds of his own breathing. Why is he so worked up about this? (Something is wrong.) He’s fine. Everything is fine. (Everything is wrong.)

Then, suddenly loud in Matt’s ears, a quiet exhale of breath.

It’s not him.

Matt’s heart is beating so hard he can feel it in his throat, and he thinks at first that that’s the reason he can’t hear the other person in the room. But the longer he listens, the more certain he is that there isn’t anyone else in the room with him.

There was never anyone else in the room with him.

Matt heard that exhale. He heard it, close enough that he should’ve been able to feel the warm breath against his ear. (He didn’t feel anything.) But there’s no one in the room, so there was no exhale. (He heard it though, he heard it, he heard-)

“There’s no one here,” he says, as if speaking the words aloud will calm him down (they don’t).

There’s no response, but Matt wasn’t expecting one. (He wasn’t. There’s no one here.) His senses don’t pick up anything out of place. Matt’s never been afraid of not being able to see before, not with his heightened senses, but for the first time he’s acutely aware that if he wasn’t blind he’d be able to look around and confirm that his apartment was empty. 

(Or that it wasn’t.) 

Instead he’s left feeling like, for the first time, this sixth sense of his is missing something (someone). That there’s something waiting in the corner, watching him move to the locked closet and grab his billy clubs (there’s nothing waiting in the corner because he’d hear them, he’d hear them-).

Matt hurries back to his bedroom, billy clubs held in a tight fist (they don’t make him feel any safer).

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

Something watches.

(There’s nothing there.)

Matt spends the next night sitting on the roof of his building, all his senses trained on his apartment below him. Someone (something) has been moving his things. Someone breathed down the back of his neck (there was no one there). Matt isn’t leaving this roof until he finds out who they are and what they want. 

His apartment stays silent. No one enters it the entire night. 

Matt’s keys are on the kitchen floor when he finally walks back inside at nearly the crack of dawn.

No one had entered his apartment.

He can feel someone watching him from the corner as he sheds his suit and gets ready for his day. There’s no heartbeat, no breathing, no body heat. No heat at all- a cold spot in the middle of his fire that sends chills down Matt’s spine.

It disappears as soon as Matt notices it. 

No. It was never there. It doesn’t disappear because there’s nothing there, there’s nothing that could have been there.

Matt’s heart is racing. The corner is empty. (For now.)

There’s nothing there. There was never anything there.

(There was something there. Matt doesn’t know what, but it was there, he felt it there, it was there.)

“You okay, buddy?” Foggy asks at the office. “You seem… I dunno, a little out of it, I guess.”

“I’m fine,” Matt says. And then, because he doesn’t want to lie to Foggy he adds, “Just haven’t been sleeping well.”

Foggy tsks. He might shake his head, Matt can’t tell. (He should be able to tell.) “You should take a night off,” he chides. “Get some actual rest. The city can live without Daredevil for one night.”

“I’ll do that,” Matt says. 

He does. It doesn’t help. 

He stays at home and he lies awake, listening for his keys to fall onto the floor (he doesn’t hear them but they aren’t on the counter in the morning) or his furniture to be moved (no scraping of the couch against the floor but he’s bruised his shin three times this week). He dozes off, wakes up with his blankets untucked and crumbled in a heap on the floor. (He must have just kicked them off in his sleep.)

He goes out, tries to tire himself out on the streets. Comes back, hears a breath by his rooftop access. (There’s no heartbeat.) Climbs down, goes around to the fire escape instead. (Cold spot, halfway up.) Climbs down, back to the roof- no breathing (no heartbeat), so he finally gets inside. 

Eyes, watching him from the corner. There’s nothing on his radar, no heartbeat, no smells- cold spots and breathing and nothing concrete, nothing that he can identify, and if he could just see what it was-

He tries to sleep, in those few hours before he has to be in the office, but he can’t. Not with those eyes watching him (how can there be eyes without any body?). Not with the breathing that’s not always there, but that makes it worse- lying in the dark, horrible anticipation clawing at his stomach, listening, listening, listening for that next breath to come-

Karen tells him that he looks terrible. Foggy tells him to take a sick day.

Matt does.

The thing is still in his corner.

Matt doesn’t sleep.

He’s going crazy, he has to be. Things like this just don’t happen, not in real life. He wonders, with a quiet terror, if the radioactive chemicals that enhanced his senses are enhancing them even more, making his mind go into overdrive and sense things that aren’t even there. Charles-Bonnet Syndrome, kicked into high gear. 

That doesn’t explain the moved objects, but if Matt can’t even trust his own mind to tell him what’s really there who’s to say that he isn’t just forgetting things, misjudging things, blowing things out of proportion?

He doesn’t think he’s forgetting things. But if he really is losing his mind, how would he even know?

He calls Foggy, tells him that he’s going to be late to work, and goes to see Father Lantom. 

“I think I’m losing my mind,” goes over about as well as Matt expected it to go. He leaves the church with a pamphlet on mental health resources (“Always seek out mundane answers first, Matthew…”) and a small new crucifix in his pocket (“…but there is never any harm in asking God to intervene. I know you can’t see the crucifix, but perhaps it’s presence will remind you to pray for answers.”).

“Are you okay, Matt?” Foggy corners him later in the day. The crucifix is a heavy weight in Matt’s pocket, comforting. Familiar. “You’ve seemed… I dunno, tense and worried a lot lately. And I know you go to confession a lot but you don’t usually come in late to work because of it.”

“I’m… dealing with some things,” Matt says vaguely. “At my apartment.”

(He’s losing his mind, he knows that, but he’s not telling Foggy that. Not yet. Not until he’s sure.)

“Want me to come over and help?” Foggy offers, and Matt finds himself accepting immediately. Foggy will tell him if he’s going crazy (he hopes).

Matt sets his keys on the counter (they won’t stay there) as Foggy looks around the room. “You move your furniture?” he asks.

Matt’s pulse skyrockets. “No,” he says. “You… you think it’s been moved?”

(He’s not crazy?)

“Yeah, one of your chairs is turned around,” Foggy says. “Like a complete 180. What’s going on?”

(If he’s not crazy…)

Matt digs into his pocket and pulls out the small crucifix. “Foggy, I need you to help me find a place to hang this.”

They settle on the door of the closet that holds his father’s trunk. “I still don’t get it,” Foggy says as he carefully hammers a nail into the wood of the door. “You’re hanging this up because you think you’re going crazy?”

“No,” Matt says. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m crazy. But I don’t know. I don’t remember moving the chair but maybe I did and I forgot? The crucifix is to remind me to pray to God for guidance.”

“Why do you need the reminder, though?” Foggy asks. “You pray every day anyway. And I’m pretty sure you already have a cross hanging up in your bedroom.”

“This is different.” (It is. It’s a reminder to pray for more than just Hell’s Kitchen, for Foggy’s safety, in memory of his father and grandmother and everyone he couldn’t save. It’s a reminder that he needs to pray for himself, for his mortal well-being instead of just his eternal salvation.)

“Okay,” Foggy says. He sounds unconvinced (Matt doesn’t blame him). “I hope you know I’m spending the night. Just in case you sleepwalk and start moving furniture again.”

There’s nothing in the corner (Matt keeps checking, just in case). His keys stay on the counter (Matt keeps checking). Nothing gets moved (maybe Matt actually is losing his mind). They order Thai, Foggy narrates a terrible Sy-Fy original movie, they’re both distracted but neither talk about why. 

Matt’s exhausted (he’s always exhausted these days) and he lets Foggy talk him into taking the bed, instead of making the noble sacrifice of sleeping on the couch. (He wants Foggy in the bedroom where he’s safe from the thing in the corner, but there’s nothing in the corner tonight. Matt keeps checking.)

Matt needs to stay awake to protect Foggy (there’s nothing to protect him from, except himself because Matt’s just going crazy, he’s just losing his mind, he’s just) but somehow, he finds himself drifting off anyway. 

Until a loud thud and a shout wake him up in the middle of the night.

He flies out of the bedroom, billy clubs in his hands (he keeps them by the bed these days, just in case). “Foggy? What’s wrong?” he asks. He picks out Foggy’s frantic heartbeat immediately and, on the floor by him, the broken pieces of… something.

The crucifix. 

The one that was hanging across the room. 

Matt’s sleep-tired brain is trying to connect the pieces (he was in his bedroom, this couldn’t have been him, he’s not crazy- unless he doesn’t remember leaving his bedroom, unless he is losing his mind, unless) and doesn’t register the other presence until it moves. No heartbeat (no breathing, not tonight) but it’s colder than ice as it races towards him (Matt doesn’t know how when there are no legs, no body, nothing at all).

He swings out, connects with ice-cold air but nothing solid, nothing he can fight. There’s no body but he feels hands on his arms, clawing at his skin, nails digging into flesh and dragging down in deep scratches-

“Jesus Christ!” Foggy shouts. “Matt, your arms-”

The thing vanishes as soon as Foggy speaks and Matt collapses on the floor. His arms are radiating pain (Foggy mentioned his arms, what happened to his arms?) and he can smell blood. His blood. 

He’s bleeding. 

“You’re bleeding,” Foggy says, moving off the couch and kneeling next to Matt to gently inspect his arms. “Matt, what was that?”

He’s bleeding. The thing in the corner scratched him and he’s bleeding. Foggy can see him bleeding. He’s not-

“What happened?” Matt asks. “I didn’t- I didn’t scratch myself, did I?”

“What? No, you- you tried to punch something, but there wasn’t anything there and then you just had scratches on your arm,” Foggy says. “Christ, these look bad too, what the hell happened?”

“I’m not crazy,” Matt says quietly. “There was a thing. In the corner. It’s been- it’s been moving my furniture and the keys and- and the crucifix. It was breathing, Foggy I heard it breathe and it’s cold and it-”

It scratched him.

“Matt, you aren’t making any sense.” (It scratched him. Only one thing would scratch him.) “There was nothing in the corner, I would’ve seen it, there was nothing there.”

“There was.” (Matt’s not crazy.) “It doesn’t have a physical form, but it was there.” (He’s not crazy. It was really there.) 

“You aren’t making any sense!”

“Foggy listen to me,” Matt says. (Foggy has to listen, has to believe him.) “I need you- need you to get my phone. Call Father Lantom. There’s a demon, here, in my apartment. Need him to help me cleanse it. Bless the space, get rid of the demon.”

“No, what we need to do is clean the scratches on your arms and think about this rationally!”

“Nothing else would leave scratches!” Matt all but shouts. “Nothing else fits! I’m either going crazy or there’s a demon, and I’m not crazy!”

He’s breathing heavily. Foggy’s heart is racing. His arms still feel like they’re on fire (he can still smell the blood).

“Alright,” Foggy says. He sounds like he’s placating Matt (he is, Matt knows he is). “Alright, look. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if having your place blessed a priest will make you feel better then I’m on board.”

It’s nearly dawn by the time Father Lantom arrives. He hands Foggy prayer cards and says to Matt, “I didn’t have time to print these out on a Braille printer, but I copied them onto a notepad. Can you read them like this?”

Matt runs his hand over the letters. The imprint is deep enough that he can just make out the words. “Yes. But I know most of the responses already.”

“Of course you do.” Father Lantom sighs. “This is going to take a while, so we should begin now.”

The broken pieces of the crucifix are sitting on the coffee table, so that’s where they start. Father Lantom makes the sign of the cross. Matt copies him. A beat later, Foggy follow suit. 

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” Matt intones. 

“Amen,” Foggy repeats, a second later. 

“Lord, we, your people, pray for the gift of your holy blessing to ward off every harm and to bring to fulfillment every right desire. We ask this through Christ our Lord.”

“Amen.” Foggy is almost in-sync with Matt this time. 

They continue through the Blessing of Persons, the Prayers for Protection and the Prayers to bless the house. Matt feels his spirit grow lighter with each amen that he prays. The scratches on his arms (Foggy had insisted on cleaning and bandaging them as they waited for Father Lantom) hurt less. 

Then it’s Matt’s turn to lead the prayer. “Father, I come before you today as the renter of this property. I desire to dedicate this property for your Glory.”

The keys on the kitchen counter rattle.

“I ask you Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, that you cleanse all areas of this house and property from any evil in any form…”

The keys fall on the floor. Foggy jumps. (Matt isn’t crazy. The thought isn’t as comforting as it was before.)

Matt finishes the prayer quickly, stepping back to let Father Lantom take the lead again for the Litany of Saints. 

The couch moves halfway through the list. Foggy’s heart is still racing.

Matt hears the covers fall off his bed by the time they reach the call-and-response at the end of the Litany. He doesn’t say anything. (Foggy is still shaking.)

Father Lantom pauses to take a drink of water. “We’re almost done,” he says. “We have the blessing at your door, and then blessings for each room. Be thankful your apartment is small, the ritual requires holy water, holy incense, and holy salt for each room.”

“Have you Catholics considered making your rituals, I don’t know, shorter?” Foggy mutters. 

Father Lantom chuckles. “Stop by for a latte at some point and we can debate the matter all morning, if you want.”

He steps up to the door, holding out a large crucifix, and begins to speak in Latin. “Ecce crucis signum…”

The crucifix shakes. Father Lantom tightens his grip and finishes his prayer. His glass of water goes flying off the coffee table, shattering against the far wall. 

There’s something cold in the corner, pacing back and forth, snarling in rage. (The others don’t hear it, but Matt can.) 

You’ll get what’s coming to you, Matt thinks as Father Lantom lights the incense and begins to purify the main room.

The demon flees to the bedroom. Matt’s cross falls off his wall.

Father Lantom purifies that room too.

The demon rushes past them to the bathroom, the last unpurified space in the apartment. The room is freezing when they enter and the demon is close enough to lash out at them, sending bottles flying out of the medicine cabinet and trying to tear at their clothes. But it’s weak now, can’t do the type of damage it was doing before, and as Father Lantom finishes the prayer it flees with a shriek.

Matt can’t sense it, no cold spot in the apartment to be found. (It’s gone. It’s finally gone.)

Father Lantom finishes the final blessings, the prayers against retaliation, snuffs the incense as Matt and Foggy intone the last amen. 

Foggy’s heart isn’t racing anymore (Matt can smell his fear but it’s old, diminished from what it was before). Father Lantom sighs, tired, and presses a new crucifix into Matt’s hands. “Hang that up again,” he says. “And sorry for insinuating that you were losing your mind.”

“You were simply following Church procedure, Father,” Matt assures him. “Most cases of reported demonic activity do ultimately end up being caused by mental illness.”

“Yeah, but not this one.” Father Lantom gathers up his supplies and shakes his head. “Never a dull moment with you, is there, Matthew?”

“Well,” Foggy says after Father Lantom has left and it’s just the two of them again. (Still no cold spot.) “That happened.”

“Sorry you had to get involved,” Matt apologizes. There’s still glass on the floor from Father Lantom’s water. Matt wonders if he can talk Foggy into cleaning it up for him. 

“Hey, no, no apologizing for that,” Foggy says. “I’d feel worse if you had to go through this yourself. God, you were dealing with this yourself, for weeks weren’t you? And I just thought you were spending too much time out as Daredevil, not getting enough sleep or something… I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”

Matt shrugs. “I mean, I would’ve been concerned if your first thought every time I show up to work exhausted was demonic activity.” 

“But you jumped to that conclusion.”

“Because I was raised by very strict nuns who took all Church doctrine very seriously,” Matt reminds him. “Once you helped me rule out mental illness, it was the only other possible option.”

Foggy shakes his head. “Still, only you would think that demons were a possible option.” He yawns loudly. “Sorry. That churchy stuff was cool but long. Very long. You might be used to that but I am not, and we are going to have a long talk later about what other badass religious stuff you’ve been hiding from me but for now I am going back to my place to sleep. Want to come with me?”

“I think I’ll crash here, actually,” Matt says. 

The corner is still empty.

There’s no one else breathing in the apartment (no heartbeats, no cold spots).

He hangs up the crucifix. Cleans up the glass, fixes his furniture, and sets his keys back on the kitchen counter. 

Matt sleeps for most of the day (his covers don’t move). 

When he wakes up, his keys are still on the kitchen counter.

**Author's Note:**

> It's my understanding that exorcism rituals have to be approved by the Vatican and performed by trained exorcists, which is an extremely lengthy process. You can either choose to read this as Father Lantom just having a soft spot for Matt and skipping the Vatican approval, or generic creative license. 
> 
> (Although for the record the ritual I wrote here is based on one I found online for a house cleansing, and I'm not sure if that has different Vatican rules than doing an exorcism on an actual person.)


End file.
